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Man, Audrey should be glad she won't remember any of this because she's absolutely right that she was a terrible person for the last five years.
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May 27, 2019 05:53
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:I just realize that these diary entries take place over the course of two days. This dude just spent a weekend experiencing his own suicide dozens or hundreds of times in a row. The Ambassador might have lost his mind.
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May 27, 2019 06:36
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So the entire "kidnap and isolate" strategy is just to make sure that anyone else touching the scepter can't learn anything useful and stop the war/plague?
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May 27, 2019 06:39
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Paladin posted:So the entire "kidnap and isolate" strategy is just to make sure that anyone else touching the scepter can't learn anything useful and stop the war/plague? i think its self preservation for the simulated people within the simulation
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May 27, 2019 06:45
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Paladin posted:So the entire "kidnap and isolate" strategy is just to make sure that anyone else touching the scepter can't learn anything useful and stop the war/plague? I think what happened is this: 1) the Ambassador gets the scepter and does all his experiments without telling anyone else. No one else knows how the scepter works so everything continues as normal, and the Ambassador is willing to kill himself repeatedly to return to the real world so it makes no difference. 2) once the Ambassador is finished, he has to tell some people about how the scepter works and therefore how he knows so much about the future, so that they can do something about it. This includes the little green dude. Now no one is using the scepter, but they know how it works. 3) when Lyndon touches the scepter, the Skyggemyrians realize that means they're living in a simulation of Lyndon's future. They try to keep him alive out of self-preservation because they suddenly realize that even in a simulation, they're still conscious, living, breathing representations of themselves, and they don't want to die. Clearly the point isn't to stop anyone from learning anything to the point of self-sacrifice, otherwise they would have just killed Lyndon to stop him from learning anything. I think the isolation is mostly to keep Lyndon alive so they themselves stay alive. Hence not just isolating him away from the world and telling him non-stressful lies about it, but also the exercise and healthy eating and everything. What's really funny to me is that the knowledge that they're in a simulation is affecting the results of the simulation. If the Skyggemyrians didn't know they were in a simulation they wouldn't be keeping Lyndon alive like this, and so his eventual death would be completely different. The scepter only works if no one knows how it works.
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May 27, 2019 06:45
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vyelkin posted:I think what happened is this: But the ambassador was the first person to protect him.
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May 27, 2019 07:16
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Eeevil posted:But the ambassador was the first person to protect him. Exactly. The ambassador has only ever been the protagonist in a scepter vision, and therefore had no reason to think that the other people in the simulation were conscious. When Lyndon touches the scepter, the ambassador suddenly realizes that to be the case, and realizes that if Lyndon dies he will cease to exist--but without the consciousness of waking up as the one who touched the scepter. He will just poof out of existence. So, as someone who knows exactly how the scepter works, he tries to protect Lyndon so that his own simulated life continues. If the point was just to prevent Lyndon from learning anything about their plans, he would just kill him right there after he touched the scepter in the embassy.
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May 27, 2019 12:49
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So does the simulation start for everyone with them thinking "the sceptre must be broken, nothing happened"?
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May 27, 2019 13:39
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I reckon the starlight issue is that the scepter has become somewhat recursive, now that it's being used for more than just one death, but passing information back in time then acting on that etc. etc. So it's falling back on that old technique to free up resources: Thick clouds of fog to hide the stuff that hasn't loaded.
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May 27, 2019 13:57
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Terror Sweat posted:So does the simulation start for everyone with them thinking "the sceptre must be broken, nothing happened"? Looks like it: http://trixie.thecomicseries.com/comics/76/
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May 27, 2019 14:33
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Pistol_Pete posted:Looks like it: In retrospect, Audrey killed so many iterations of herself and her friends on this page: http://trixie.thecomicseries.com/comics/79/
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May 27, 2019 14:38
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Cat Mattress posted:Approximately 140 millions times less far away than 2157 light-days. That was my point. The sun being simulated tells you basically nothing because it's ~8 minutes away in terms of the light from it. I was just trying to make them do a search because I'm a monster.
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May 27, 2019 21:28
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The Lone Badger posted:To be fair, it's also Lyndon's fault. re-title the comic Lyndon's Fault imo
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May 27, 2019 21:29
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Terror Sweat posted:So does the simulation start for everyone with them thinking "the sceptre must be broken, nothing happened"? That or "Oh, guess I'm the doomed one."
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May 27, 2019 21:31
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Oh poo poo, I just realized--if Audrey stabs Lyndon right after they finish reading this journal, then the real Lyndon gets a vision of himself reading all the information they need to save the world. (It means she'll die too, but she looks so guilty that she just might sacrifice herself to fix everything. Plus, she loves solving problems with murder, and this would both solve all the problems and murder everyone in her world.) Relevant Tangent posted:That or "Oh, guess I'm the doomed one." It's a pretty rare set of circumstances under which someone could learn that, if you touch the scepter and nothing happens, you're in a simulation. Because you have to see the scepter not working in that vision, and since the vision is only the last few seconds of the simulation, the only time that happens is if you're seconds from death. So if you're in a position to know, you probably die. Lyndon survived seeing that nothing happened when he touched the scepter, but his reaction points to the other problem: most people aren't single-minded enough to use the scepter this way.
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May 27, 2019 21:51
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the ambassador has the kind of scientific curiosity that would lead him to touch the scepter in a scepter vision, and then make sure to include the information on what happens in his pre-death message, so he knows Also after doing some timeline math I agree that it only simulates X years (a little bit more than five) of starlight due to limits on its processing power
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May 28, 2019 03:44
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:Oh poo poo, I just realized--if Audrey stabs Lyndon right after they finish reading this journal, then the real Lyndon gets a vision of himself reading all the information they need to save the world. I think she still doesn't realize that they're in a simulation yet though, so she has no reason to stab Lyndon.
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May 28, 2019 05:18
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vyelkin posted:I think she still doesn't realize that they're in a simulation yet though, so she has no reason to stab Lyndon. She will after they finish reading the journal, since presumably the ambassador wrote down "some other jerk touched the crystal" in his diary of exposition.
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May 28, 2019 08:32
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Otherkinsey Scale posted:She will after they finish reading the journal, since presumably the ambassador wrote down "some other jerk touched the crystal" in his diary of exposition. Yeah but by that point they might have been reading long enough for Lyndon's death moment to not include the most important information.
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May 28, 2019 08:36
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The only thing Lyndon will remember is being bald.
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May 28, 2019 09:15
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I wonder why the Ambassador didn't destroy his old diaries once he realised he was in someone else's death, just to be safe - it's not like they're the originals. Still, I'm liking the Thorsby twist on Groundhog Day. That first suicide before he was certain it worked would have been a doozy.
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May 28, 2019 10:52
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:Also after doing some timeline math I agree that it only simulates X years (a little bit more than five) of starlight due to limits on its processing power It doesn't stop simulating anything, it only simulates a five light-year radius of existence. The stars were never there, only the light they were emitting that had already entered that radius. It look five years for the last of those photons to hit earth, so it looked like all the stars vanished at once.
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May 28, 2019 19:38
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RandomFerret posted:It doesn't stop simulating anything, it only simulates a five light-year radius of existence. The stars were never there, only the light they were emitting that had already entered that radius. It look five years for the last of those photons to hit earth, so it looked like all the stars vanished at once. ...Together, we can defeat Thorsby the Farcebringer.
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May 29, 2019 11:22
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RandomFerret posted:It doesn't stop simulating anything, it only simulates a five light-year radius of existence. The stars were never there, only the light they were emitting that had already entered that radius. It look five years for the last of those photons to hit earth, so it looked like all the stars vanished at once. yeah that’s what I meant, five years worth of starlight
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May 29, 2019 12:17
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Synthbuttrange posted:The only thing Lyndon will remember is being bald.
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May 30, 2019 01:24
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Yeah, he's beefy af. "You killed me because I was super beefy, I must never lift a weight."
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May 30, 2019 14:35
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The stars going out in the simulation means that unless the death happens before they go out, it will affect the simulation's outcome significantly, so it's unreliable.
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May 30, 2019 15:57
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super sweet best pal posted:The stars going out in the simulation means that unless the death happens before they go out, it will affect the simulation's outcome significantly, so it's unreliable. Once the Sceptre's secret is out, it becomes totally unreliable in general. If it's widely known that someone who touches it and doesn't experience a vision has plunged the world into a simulation, it changes the decision-making process not just for that person, but for all the people who know that they're in a simulation contingent on the life of the sceptre-toucher. I really like it. The magic has limits, it's not infallible, and its limits are things that wouldn't ever arise if you used the Sceptre without doing vigorous testing on just how it's delivering your death predictions to you.
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May 30, 2019 15:59
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Android Blues posted:Once the Sceptre's secret is out, it becomes totally unreliable in general. If it's widely known that someone who touches it and doesn't experience a vision has plunged the world into a simulation, it changes the decision-making process not just for that person, but for all the people who know that they're in a simulation contingent on the life of the sceptre-toucher. It's really classic Thorsby in that it's taking a magic item that another storyteller would just have be magic, and then really thinking hard about how it would work and how the mechanics needed to make it function would also be exploitable.
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May 30, 2019 16:31
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http://trixie.thecomicseries.com/comics/384 shhh
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May 31, 2019 07:46
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Great job Lyndon, you've ensured a witness will survive because if uvar fucked around with this message at 10:12 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 09:19
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uvar posted:Great job Lyndon, you've ensured a witness will survive because if Trixie kills them now you lose your powers. I think? Thorsby magic is so complicated. Audrey.
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May 31, 2019 09:37
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super sweet best pal posted:Audrey. If Trixie killed the sleeper it'd stop his magic too.
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May 31, 2019 09:41
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new (non-fiction?!) thorsby comic! http://evolutions.thecomicseries.com/ in the future all theses will be presented like this
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May 31, 2019 17:54
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break-up breakdown posted:new (non-fiction?!) thorsby comic! Well that was.... very very Thorsby.
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May 31, 2019 20:37
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Oh yea, I saw you kissing a bunch of dudes before. Guess you can live.
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May 31, 2019 22:42
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Wow that's really depressing. Especially since it implies that suicidal thoughts aren't something in your genes and just something your mother messes you up with. But yeah, that's an interesting thought experiment which goes to places I wouldn't have considered on my own. It does help that he searched for studies which vaguely correlate, with what he's trying to claim. But I fear that this approach to statistics is a bit subjective. Then again, doing a rigorous, double blind, reproducible, randomized, statistically significant longtime case study about the rates of genealogical causes for suicide would be somewhat unfeasible. It would be the most depressing situation, but I sorta want to to explore that idea now. Like the Truman show where a lot of main characters commit suicide at some point. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 22:48 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 22:43
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break-up breakdown posted:new (non-fiction?!) thorsby comic! my gut tells me that this series will, for better or worse, accidentally reveal far more about Thorsby than we knew before e: my gut holds its lil gut-breath every time someone online starts talking abt queer or mental health theory in a non-fictional context for the first time, lol e2: oh wow okay uh hmm Peanut Butler fucked around with this message at 23:41 on May 31, 2019 |
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May 31, 2019 23:29
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The gay uncles thing is pretty concordant with what we know about the genetics of being gay. Insofar as there's a biological component, it's likely something that happens in the womb, so it being due to genes carried by the mother makes more sense than it being due to genes carried by the gay person themselves. We don't know enough to say for sure of course, it could well be due to genes from both parties interacting, but he has clearly read existing science on the issue and is extrapolating based on that. It was still uncomfortable to read just because you're constantly expecting the terrible opinion hammer drop, but it never really comes. Thorsby good.
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May 31, 2019 23:41
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The suicide thing, way more of a shot in the dark, and has less scientific grounding. I suspect that suicidal tendencies are too complex a social phenomenon to be explained by spitballing genetics in isolation. Still, they almost certainly do have a genetic component, so it's not an unreasonable thing to theorise about.
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May 31, 2019 23:43
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